Procedure and House Affairs Committee on Nov. 7th, 2017

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Order.

Welcome back to the 77th meeting of the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs. For members' information, we are now in public.

Members will recall PROC's 33rd report in the previous session of Parliament, which was concurred in by the House on March 11, 2015, and called for the committee to conduct a review of the electronic petition system after it had been in place for two years.

In order to assist us with this review, we are joined by Charles Robert, Clerk of the House of Commons, and André Gagnon, deputy clerk, procedure. Thank you for being here. It's your first visit to the House.

Basically, before we make these rules for electronic petitions permanent in the Standing Orders, we want to see how the first two-year trial period worked and if there were any problems or any suggested changes to the procedures we have in place. We've asked you and we've asked any of the parties to bring forward any issues they had with the system. We look forward to your opening comments.

[Charles Robert, Clerk of the House of Commons]

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you for the invitation to address the committee in its review of the House of Commons e-petition system.

To provide some context, I will begin with a brief summary of the current process. Essentially an e-petitioner creates an account, provides some basic personal information, and then drafts the petition using a standardized template provided on the e-petitions website.

Next, the e-petitioner must identify at least five supporters and choose a member of Parliament to act as the sponsor of the petition. Members have 30 days to respond. If they refuse to be the sponsor or if no response is received within the 30 days, the petitioner may select another member. If five members have declined to sponsor the petition, it would not be allowed to proceed.

Once a member is a sponsor, the petition is reviewed for conformity, translated, and is then open for signatures for 120 days on the website. Those that garner fewer than 500 signatures are simply archived on the site, while those with 500 signatures or more may be presented in the House once the sponsor receives a certificate containing the text of the petition and the total number of signatures.

The process of presenting the e-petition to the House is identical to that for paper petitions, although only government responses to petitions are posted on the website.

The e-petitions site has generated significant interest. In the last year it has accounted for roughly one-third of all traffic on the House of Commons website, with approximately 2.5 million visits to the e-petitions site from over 3,000 different communities. Of these, 40% were redirected from social media sites, and about two-thirds of visits occurred on mobile devices. This shows that the social media sharing tools and the mobile responsiveness of the site were important aspects of its design.

During this time, 1,343 e-petitions have been created, 400 or 30% of which have been published on the site, collectively garnering over 1.1 million signatures. The primary reasons for which petitions are not published are that the draft is simply not completed by the petitioner or the petition is withdrawn before reaching the publication stage. It is quite rare for e-petitions to be found inadmissible given the guidelines established by the committee and outlined in the Standing Orders and the templates and user guides available on the site.

Among the 400 published e-petitions, 70% have reached the required minimum of 500 signatures. In addition, the site has proven to be quite secure, allowing for strong protections for the personal information that is gathered.

That being said, with certain modifications, including increased flexibility, this process and system could be made even more efficient. For example, the 120-day signature deadline prevents petitions that reach the 500-signature threshold quickly—the average is nine days—from being presented earlier. If fewer than five sponsors respond, or if some are ineligible, then the petition cannot proceed. The wording of a petition is reviewed only after a member has agreed to sponsor it, making it difficult to finalize the language of the petition.

Finally, differences remain between the rules to certify paper and electronic petitions.

For example, the threshold for signatures is 25 for paper petitions but 500 for electronic ones. Other requirements, such as the size of the paper on which they are submitted, still exist for paper petitions only.

That efficiencies can be found does not detract from the overall success of our e-petition system. In fact, it has positioned us to respond to this committee recommendation for a uniform and accessible electronic format for government responses to both e-petitions and paper petitions. I can assure the committee that the appropriate consultations with the Privy Council Office have already begun.

One of the main considerations has been whether it would be possible to envisage a paperless system for all responses to petitions, and whether it could serve as the basis for a broader system of electronic sessional papers. Such a system could one day allow for other types of documents which are tabled in the House, such as answers to written questions, to be filed electronically and published more widely than is currently the case.

I wish to thank you, Mr. Chair, for this opportunity. Mr. Gagnon and I would be pleased to respond to any questions that members may have.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Can I just confirm that you said that the wording is finalized after the person finds a sponsor, so that an MP could be sponsoring something and wouldn't know what the final wording is?

[André Gagnon, Deputy Clerk, Procedure]

The validation of the petition itself is done after a sponsor has been found, but the sponsor would see the text that is submitted.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Go ahead, Mr. Reid.

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON]

Thank you.

To follow up on that point, is this purely for grammatical problems, translation, and that kind of thing, as opposed to anything that relates to the substance of the petition?

[André Gagnon]

The substance is also looked at—for instance, if the petition deals with a matter that has to do with provincial jurisdiction instead of a federal jurisdiction or if the language used is not respectful.

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON]

If, let's say, someone wanted to put forward a petition asking Parliament to take a stand on Quebec's recent Bill 62 relating to receipt of provincial government services with your face covered, would that be ruled inadmissible?

[André Gagnon]

The question at that time would be to determine if it is part of the jurisdiction of the members of Parliament or government, if it is advisable for them, and if it is permitted for them to do such a thing.

[Charles Robert]

I think the complexity of the question also relates to the fact that it might involve a charter issue, and that has broader applications than simply the question of federal-provincial jurisdiction.

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON]

Just to follow that, if you don't mind, this relates to another discussion we've had in the past over allowing or disallowing private members' bills. I've always taken the view that we should be as expansive as possible. If a private member's bill, like a government bill, crosses a jurisdictional line should it be passed, it would eventually, to the degree that it is ruled ultra vires, be ruled unconstitutional by the courts. That's the rule for the courts and not for us. I would take a similar approach here.

Surely we have both a moral right and a moral obligation to be prepared to take positions on any issue, regardless of jurisdictional boundary. We don't have the right constitutionally to act upon such issues, but we have the right and the obligation to have intelligent thoughts on them, particularly as it is entirely conceivable, as happened in the past, that something that was formerly the jurisdiction of one level of government would be transferred by means of an amendment to the other level, because we ultimately felt that was the right thing to do.

Let's think about this. Let's say someone puts forward a petition saying that some item of jurisdiction ought to be transferred from the provinces to the federal government. Let's say it's related to the whole rollout of marijuana. The provinces get to decide the age, and the idea is that it should be federal. If they had a petition on that, would you regard it as being permissible or impermissible?

[André Gagnon]

In fact, if the petition were to ask Parliament or ask the government to initiate discussions with their provincial counterparts, that would certainly be acceptable, in the sense that it is under the jurisdiction of the government to initiate discussions on separation of powers between provincial and federal jurisdictions.

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON]

Is it okay if I—

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

I see where you're going.

If it's okay with the committee, I'm going to do this informally, as we did with the last section, as long as it works okay.

Okay, go ahead.

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON]

I don't want to monopolize. I just have a different direction to go with this. Is that okay?

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Yes.

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON]

The traditional paper petition system, which has existed almost since time immemorial, certainly since the 1200s, presupposes that one's right to anonymity is forfeited when one signs a petition. The undersigned people have signed on, but it's on paper. Originally it went to London; now the petition comes to Ottawa. It is not readily available electronically to others, who are far removed. I think we all sense there's something different with an electronically collected signature that would be as readily available to, say, Vladimir Putin or the plutocrats who run China as it would be to their member of Parliament and anybody else going to the clerk's office to examine the records.

I think, but I actually don't know, that I'm expressing views that everybody shares here, but I think we all probably feel most comfortable with that information remaining well captured and behind some kind of impenetrable wall where you can confirm that the same person hasn't signed a petition 3,000 times on the one hand, but on the other hand, the aforementioned individuals don't get to see who signed.

I'll just ask the question. Given that we've seen numerous leaks, the paradise papers being the latest of them, are there any further security measures that you think are appropriate? Are there any concerns in this regard that you think we need to pay extra attention to?

[André Gagnon]

Mr. Reid, this precise question was one that was very much of interest for the previous committee that agreed to put in place the system of e-petitions, and I would say it was probably one of the most important questions that came up in trying to build an e-petition system. The way it is built today has made us very proud to say that all of the information that has been gathered has been gathered in a way that respects all of the high standards regarding privacy of information, and we also apply a policy of erasing all of that information in a timely manner. We do that after, not before, an individual who has signed an e-petition has received a response from the House of Commons indicating that there was a government response to the petition.

As you can imagine, we keep that information, but that information is only available to House of Commons authority and not to members or to anyone outside.

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON]

Effectively, then, there's a certain window during which the petition is live. You can still get more signatures. Then there's a window after that during which the government can respond, and when the response occurs, it's sent out to everybody who signed it, and at some point shortly after that, the data is deleted.

[André Gagnon]

In a regular fashion, during the year, we erase a lot of the information we have received, yes.

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Mr. Simms is next, and then Mr. Kennedy.

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Coast of Bays—Central—Notre Dame, NL]

I was not on PROC, but I was critic in the last Parliament, and I vehemently, viciously supported this when it came to the House from Mr. Stewart over there. I hope to get his comments later, if that's—

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

He's next after you.

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Coast of Bays—Central—Notre Dame, NL]

Great.

I have a couple of quick questions.

I see your point about 25 names versus 500 names. That's quite a discrepancy. I'm not sure if this is a question for you or him at this point. I want to clarify because, on the record, I think that's a bit excessive. Not achieving the 500 within that 120-day period means it's unsuccessful, right, for presentation?